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GPS Maker TomTom Submits Your Speed Data To Police
An anonymous reader writes "The GPS systems in TomTom's Live range all feature built-in 3G data cards, which feed location and route information back to a central server. According to CNET, this data, along with users' speed information, is being made available to local governments and the police."
From the article: "Knowing the cops can see where you're driving and how fast you're going is eye-opening stuff, but TomTom says the data is anonymous and can never be traced back to an individual user or device. Ordinarily, we'd be reassured by this, but we recall Apple saying something similar before the location-tracking excrement hit the phone-carrying fan."
Then it could print out speeding tickets as you go!
Also automatic shock collars for when crimes are committed.
Dear TomTom,
Why would you go and do a stupid thing like this? I loved your products, but I will purchase them no more.
"We are now aware that the police have used traffic information that you have helped to create to place speed cameras at dangerous locations where the average speed is higher than the legally allowed speed limit," he says.
Read more: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/cartech/tomtom-admits-to-sending-your-routes-and-speed-information-to-the-police-50003618/#ixzz1KqGfyhmm
cough *BS* cough They are using it to make more money and just place the cameras where the probability is higher to make money! Thanks TOM TOM your company was going downhill, but it will REALLY go downhill now!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
our Galtian overlords would work out that privacy is an aspect of security and that pervasive surveillance is an inherent security vulnerability. sigh
This speed trap is brought to you by TomTom.
The story is that the data was used by Dutch police to determine where to set up speed traps. The data was NOT used to go after any TomTom users for speeding.
It's still a somewhat dastardly tactic, but not quite what people on here are seeing it to be.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
You only have six points remaining on your license.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Ha, you overestimate how much people care, investors and customers alike.
TomTom is down a whopping 0.8% on the day and over the past 5 days it's up 1.2%. There was a large selloff yesterday morning (presumably the information first became public overnight?) but the price quickly recovered.
Why on earth would you be reassured?
"Anonymous" GPS traces that start and/or end with your home every day are not anonymous. Apple tried that trick - it's an intelligence test for the masses.
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Repeat after me: the location database on your iPhone is not, and is not under reasonable suspiction of having ever been sent to Apple.
No comment.
I am an apple apologist, I guess. The reason is that I see the fact that Apple stores your location data on your cell phone when you are using their _location_ services as less serious than TomTom _giving_away_ your data to the authorities on a general basis, with no warrant or anything of the sort. Funny thing is, I don't even have an iPhone myself, and even I think that analogy fails pretty miserably.
I couldn't agree more. Apple simple created a security weakness on your phone and on your own computer, but didn't (as far as anyone has shown) upload this data to anyone.
TomTom has just joined my permanent Do Not Buy list. Their allegations that it can't be tracked ring hollow.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
http://corporate.tomtom.com/contactus.cfm
Send the a message directly. I think that'll be a great way to slashdo... err I mean get the message across to them.
If they can somehow verify that the data actually is anonymized, I don't really have a problem with them submitting it to the government. The state departments of transportation need to know how people are actually driving. Getting that data normally takes long, expensive studies, but they do it anyway because it makes people safer: if the average speed on a road is 5 mph over the legal limit, that's probably not a big deal; if it's 30 mph over, then there may well be something wrong with the design of the road (alternatively, the speed limit may just be set too low). If TomTom can help make things less expensive for taxpayers and safer for all drivers, without compromising privacy—I see that as a win.
If they find the speed limit is typically 30mph over for a given highway, they will increase patrols on said highway. In addition to potential safety concerns, speed limits are used as a revenue source - essentially as an under the table tax. Thus providing data of any sort to the police could become more expensive for taxpayers.
The other problem with saying "oh its anonymous so it is ok with me" is how much easier it would be for them to start collecting unique identifiers for cars without explicitly informing the public. Even more likely - a district which has traffic cameras might decide this new source of data ought to serve the same function, and pass a law mandating unique identifiers be passed along to law enforcement. Its quite the slippery slope.
I see no reason to believe that.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I don't have a TomTom (got an Android and TomTom in the same birthday), but I don't believe you have to register for any TomTom service, you just buy the thing, plug it in, and it does map-stuff. Unless you sign up for their map update service, I doubt they HAVE your information to give to LEOs. What can they tell you, the serial number of the unit in your car? I'm sure law enforcement, with the ten minutes a month they don't spend trying to hunt down people with insignificant personal quantities of marijuana, will set up a checkpoint so they can check the serial numbers of every TomTom looking for that bastard with serial #93824920535326469 who went 5 miles over the speed limit last week at 4am.
It's already an opt-in service.
It should actually allow the area to consider raising the speed limit. Just sending police out sounds like a kneejerk reaction. OMG YOU ARE SPEEDING!!!
The chance of you dying in your life is 100%.... may as well live a little.
Karnal
Personally, I view this development as a positive for safety on the roads - roads where 10s of thousands die each year where both speed and DUI are major contributors.
Sure, DUIs are unsafe, but speed by itself isn't a killer... {Yes, you said "contributed", I know...}
Speeding inappropriately is what kills people. The Autobahn {and German driving in general} is an example of what we should have here.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Kinda defeats the way speed limits are supposed to be set. http://www.google.com/search?q=85th+percentile+speed According to the TX-DOT, they should use the data to raise speed limits. http://onlinemanuals.txdot.gov/txdotmanuals/szn/determining_the_85th_percentile_speed.htm
But that would hurt revenue generation... Don't kid youself that they care at all about public safety...
Speeding never kills. It is the sudden stop... :)
But they could give the police discounted GPSs and publish that... :)
A Car GPS system like TomTom is used by a small fraction of the population as compared to iPhones or other smart phones.
Proof by induction then leads to the conclusion that if only one person's privacy was violated, then it'd be fine, because (s)he's an extremely small fraction of the population.
A lot of those people use TomTom because they don't know where they are, implying that they just moved or are on a trip.
Have you noticed the slightly enormous number of taxi drivers using TomToms?
I think putting GPS on police cars and having a website that tracks and maps their locations would be really interesting.
Wow. That car's been sitting still behind the supermarket for 3 hours! Seems to be a snoring sound coming from it.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Red light cameras, when used properly, are great. They do a great job of stopping the idiots who think "just one more" is okay. The problem comes when they are treated as a source of revenue: the camera warning signs get taken down (I've seen this happen in a nearby town) and then the yellow light cycle is shortened to get tickets from people who actually know the light timings. My hometown installed cameras a few years ago, and one very bright member of the city council managed to push a law through which required warning signs within xxx feet of the intersection AND mandated yellow light times according to the speed limit. Their ticket revenue went up and then back down, and the accident rate went down as well.
Likewise, anonymous speed data would be hugely useful to city planners. If people are constantly speeding through an area that has almost no accidents, they could consider raising the speed limit on a trial basis. People who drive 55 in a 45 all the time will usually drive 60 in a 50, so ticket revenue will still be there. Higher speed limits mean being able to move more cars through on the same lanes, rather than having to sink money into additional lanes when a road gets overcrowded.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
That's assuming it's a 'bug' that it didn't stop recording your location...
It never recorded your location. It's a cache (about 2MB) of a subset of Apple's location database. Your phone tells Apple, "I see these cell towers, and these WiFi access points" and Apple sends a small database of other nearby towers and APs, with their coordinates, so that as you drive around, your phone can estimate its location when you use Location Services, thus greatly speeding up GPS lock.
The iPhone never, ever, logged your specific location. Ever.
My GPS can sometimes report the wrong speeds. Like right now it says the maximum speed I've hit is ~280 MPH.
;)
Fastest I've ever gone is 140, tops.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.